Al-Qaeda's Far-Reaching New Partner

Algerian Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni said last month that Algerian security forces had killed or captured 500 Islamic fighters over the past year. In addition, about 250 members of the GSPC and other extremists have accepted the Algerian government's offer of political amnesty under a national reconciliation program, he said.

Mounir Boudjema, an expert on Algerian terrorist groups and editor of the newspaper Liberte, said the Salafist radical group is weaker than ever at home.

"In terms of strategy, they have lost," Boudjema said in an interview in Algiers. "The population doesn't want to have them anymore. The people in the villages refuse to give them blankets or water or food. The whole logistical network is falling apart."

Training and Support

Even as it struggles in Algeria, the GSPC has rapidly extended its reach elsewhere in North Africa.

With al-Qaeda's backing, the network has partnered with other radical groups, including extremists in Morocco, Libya, Tunisia and Mauritania, according to Arab and European counterterrorism officials. There was little overlap among such factions in the past, officials said, but now many have turned to the Algerians for training and support.

"The message we get is that al-Qaeda has given delegation to the GSPC to coordinate their operations in the Maghreb region," said Chakib Benmoussa, the Moroccan interior minister.

"Al-Qaeda's objective is to have a base in the region of the Sahel," he added, referring to the remote stretch of North Africa that borders the southern edge of the Sahara and covers such impoverished nations as Mali, Mauritania and Niger.

In June 2005, about 150 of the Algerian group's fighters from different countries attacked a Mauritanian military outpost, killing 15 soldiers. Another of its cells kidnapped 32 European tourists in the Sahara in 2003 and reportedly received a $5 million ransom from the German government for their release.

Counterterrorism officials said the network operates training camps in the Sahara and Sahel that cater to fighters from countries bordering Algeria, but also recruits from Europe. The camps are small and temporary, consisting of four-wheel-drive vehicles and a few instructors who teach bombmaking and guerrilla tactics, said a U.S. counterterrorism official who has studied the network and spoke on condition of anonymity.

"It's all mobile and on the run. They'll rendezvous in a wadi for four or five days, then disperse," the official said, using an Arabic word for a streambed that is usually dry. "We're very much concerned about it. It's more than just a few guys. If you add it up, it's a substantial number of folks."

Many veterans of the North African camps have traveled to Iraq, where they make up one of the biggest contingents of foreign fighters battling U.S. and Iraqi forces, according to counterterrorism officials and analysts.

According to a study released in March by the Saudi National Security Assessment Project, an adviser to the Saudi government, North Africans make up about 30 percent of foreign fighters in Iraq, with 22 percent from Algeria alone. U.S. military officials and independent analysts said other estimates have shown somewhat lower numbers of North Africans, but agreed that Algerians and the Salafist group are playing key roles in the conflict.